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Bush Wars: The Final Frontier

May 22, 2007 8:00 pmMay 22, 2007 8:00 pm

With the title of his 1980 book, the journalist Sidney Blumenthal coined a term that has entered the political lexicon: “The Permanent Campaign.” The phrase denotes the blurring of the line in modern times between campaigning and governing. Presidents, of course, have always made decisions with an eye on their popularity. But with the advent of television, polling, and professional consultants, presidents of the 1970s and ’80s—Nixon, Carter, and Reagan in particular—upped the ante by devoting the full arsenal of modern electioneering tools not just to winning office but to holding office as well.
Recently, the permanent campaign has added yet another stage—a final frontier. This is the fight for history, centered on the presidents’ libraries. The presidential libraries date from 1939, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt conceived his as a repository for his public papers, to be built with private funds and run by public officials. Since then, chief executives have sought to outdo their predecessors by entombing their archives in extravagant, self-memorializing shrines. These museums extend the permanent campaign by utilizing the same public relations techniques as a race for the White House—and lately requiring comparable fundraising efforts to boot.

Fittingly, Nixon and Carter were the ex-presidents who most assiduously sought to revive their badly damaged reputations, through their libraries and other activities. George W. Bush has taken this campaign for history to a new level. As the New York Daily News reported last fall, Bush’s team has imagined the most grandiose presidential library yet. His crack fundraisers are aiming to rake in a record-breaking $500 million for his personal temple, passing the cattle hat to “wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry,” as the newspaper put it. For the site, Bush chose Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, the First Lady’s alma mater.

Maybe Bush feared the reaction if he sought to build his library at Yale, his own undergraduate stomping grounds. But if he was hoping for smoother sailing in deep-red Texas, he miscalculated. The news of the museum’s impending arrival hardly went well on the S.M.U. campus. Universities, after all, are supposed to promote disinterested research, and the gilded histories that tend to adorn the presidential galleries don’t exactly pulse with evenhandedness.

Making matters worse, the Bush team stipulated that the university should host a “Bush Institute.” This proposed policy shop, a spokesman for the president’s camp told the Daily News, would hire right-wing scholars or journalists and “give them money to write papers and books favorable to the president’s policies.”

The S.M.U. faculty, led by two theology professors, Bill McElvaney and Susanne Johnson, protested. So did the student newspaper, the Daily Campus. But after a flurry of reports over the winter, the issue abruptly dropped out of the national news. Perhaps the seeming determination of S.M.U. President R. Gerald Turner to bring the library to campus, willy-nilly, sapped the opposition’s resolve. Perhaps the news media are simply operating as Walter Lippmann famously described: like the beam of a searchlight that illuminates one thing for a passing moment but quickly moves on to something else.

Whatever the case, the issue deserves continued attention. In mid-April, the S.M.U. faculty senate overwhelmingly passed two resolutions affirming the independence of any proposed Bush Institute from the university proper. And earlier this month the Daily Campus named Professors McElvaney and Johnson “S.M.U. Persons of the Year”—a vote of support for their efforts.

And make no mistake: the students and faculty are right to insist that S.M.U. disassociate itself from the think tank. Arguably the most distressing pattern of the Bush administration has been its jettisoning of long-established standards in virtually all areas of knowledge. From U.S. attorneys to intelligence analysts, environmental scientists to the Washington press corps, Bushies dismiss non-partisan experts as liberals and thus ripe for replacement by conservative partisans. Areas of scholarly inquiry from biology to medicine to law to economics are routinely politicized. We can expect the proposed Bush Institute at S.M.U. to treat history the same way, setting aside the norms and practices of the scholarly community in the interest of generating pseudo-research.

Ironically, this intensification of the final stage of the permanent campaign comes at a moment when changes are afoot at the presidential museum previously known for most egregiously distorting the record: the Nixon Library. Because Nixon had tried to destroy and abscond with his papers, Congress awarded ownership of them (and the papers of subsequent presidents) to the government. The museum that Nixon then built with funds from his wealthy friends remained outside the family of official libraries—a pariah every bit as much as the man it venerated. It could falsify history—by inaccurately suggesting, for example, that the Democrats wanted to impeach Nixon in order to put House Speaker Carl Albert in the White House—but it had to do so on its own dime.

Now, though, due to legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Congress and Bush in 2004, the Nixon Library is going legit. The law allows the Nixon Library to get government funds and official recognition, but—ironically—it will also force the institution to come under the direction of a real historian. The director-designate, Timothy J. Naftali, formerly of the University of Virginia, has already ripped out the notorious Watergate exhibit.

Indeed, even back when the Nixon Library was still shameless about whitewashing Nixon’s crimes, public pressure forced it to impose certain limits. When the library opened in 1990, the then-director, Hugh Hewitt (now a right-wing radio host), announced that he would exclude insufficiently pro-Nixon researchers. An outcry ensued and he was overruled and relieved of his job.

In contrast, the powers at S.M.U. have not full-throatedly condemned the idea of a Bush institute that would generate historical propaganda. For them to do so will require an outpouring of support that can only be triggered by sustained media attention. National journalists, it seems, will have to redirect their searchlight beams onto the doings of the faculty meetings, campus newspaper editorials, and administration boardrooms at S.M.U. History is at stake.

Thank you for the update on the protests by the faculty of SMU against the Bush Institute being established there. I was wondering why it all seemed to go away one day and I suspected the White House of picking up the phone and calling the editors of the mainstream media outlets. I hope SMU can successfully obliterate the existence of the Bush Institute on their campus. The Bush Administration had been a disgrace to have lived through. Not only is history at stake, but the truth, science, humanity and reason are at stake. It’s hard to imagine one six (to become eight) year period in our history that has so skewed what this country represents. Imagine an innocent child of ten in 2000 who will be eligible to vote at eighteen in 2008 and what he/she knows/doesn’t know about our democracy. What a shame!

I think the entire Bush library should be devoted to the Bush legacy on immigration, whatever the outcome of the present bill on that subject.
That seems to me to be the one positive that has so-far come out of the Bush administration.
Surely there is some authority in these United States that can make sure the history of the Bush eight years in office is truthful.
Surely the entire United States would rise up and say no if those in charge manage to include propaganda.
Ruth Beazer

As a United Methodist, I have joined many other members of our denomination in writing to SMU to criticize their willingness to host an institution that will not allow free access to documents which are, after all, public property, and which will require a declared political intent and slant from those who wish to use the resources of the proposed Bush library. This is counter to the laws governing presidential papers (no matter what “rules” Bush put in place by fiat), and counter to United Methodist principals.

I live in Dallas near SMU there is more going on there behind the scenes than is being reported. Before this shrine to the right wing is built we could use some help from the national press. The people down here won’t make waves they have been bought and paid for.

The important thing is, that repositories of information and history be present elsewhere, readily available to all, from which the truth can be sought. The Bush Institute won’t be that place, but there is no surprise there. Presidential Libraries are modern day Pyramids, built to lionize the memory of their namesakes, long after said individuals have passed away. Hopefully, the truth will be a click away, online, for those who are interested.

Thanks for this report and especially for the call for ongoing media attention. As an SMU grad (’63) I am proud of the University’s long history of upholding academic freedom in the face of right-wing pressures (in my day it was the John Birch Society demanding that people they labeled as ‘commie’ professors be fired). The thought of having the Bush name permanently associated with my alma mater is deeply distressing, but I am in favor of having those presidential records (whatever Bush, Cheney, Rove et al have managed not to ‘lose’ or shred) safely stowed at SMU where they can be accessed for use in the eventual war crimes tribunals. The difficulty lies more in the so-called ‘think tank’ which has an anti- or pseudo-academic purpose, and which by the sheer weight of money and resources is likely to exert an unhealthy influence on the campus climate (not to mention a negative impact on the world at large!).

One factor that warrants much more attention is the advocacy for situating the library and think-tank at SMU by an outfit called the Institute for Religion and Democracy. This private institution, funded by extreme right-wing family foundations, has as its purpose the undermining and reshaping of the mainline Protestant churches such as the United Church of Christ, United Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, in order to neutralize their witness for social and economic justice and bring them into compliance with an undemocratic right-wing economic, political and religious agenda. The current schismatic uproar in the Episcopal Church is to a considerable extent a result of IRD’s sustained program of disruption. They have had considerable success with the United Methodist Church as well. The overweening ambition, deviousness and maliciousness of this campaign are hard to comprehend until you see how very closely IRD’s purpose and methods resemble the neocons’ project to take over the Republican party and the US Government.

If the Bush Library is re-located to New Orleans, per Thomas Heuken’s suggestion, I recommend placing it next to the breach on 17th Street Canal levee–a fitting tribute to the incompetence of this staggeringly inept president.

Orwell lives. This place will be function as a fantasy factory, a myth-generator like all the Lost Cause institutions that attempt to lionize the Confederacy. It will have the same credibility as the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Southen Partisan and the Left Behind series. Ultimately, any association with his library will be a career-wrecker for academicians.

This is hubris in the extreme – horrifying, but hardly surprising coming from a President insistent upon the primacy (and borderline divinity) of his own ideas and completely dismissive of the ideas of others.

Kudos to SMU’s rank and file for railing against a monument that would strike eerie parallels to that statue of Sadaam Hussein that Baghdad-ers so jovially ripped from its moorings. What more evidence do Bush apologists need of this man’s complete disconnect with reality and the principles of democracy? He doesn’t just want to build the most opulent library to date. He doesn’t just want to establish a “think” tank to spout partisan rhetoric into the future. He wants all of this to be a part of a university, a Christian (God complex, anyone?) university entrusted with the education of young people and the creation of thoughtful, well-informed adults.

MaNT Methodists, especially TEXAS Methodists, are appalled at the SMU decision to allow the right wing Bush think-tank to attach itself to this fine institution. Surely it can still be stopped. Surely SMU is not totally dependent on the same wealthy interests who have underwritten and been supported by the Bush presidency. Virtually every policy of the Bush administration has been the opposite of what I have learned and studied in generations of a Texas Methodist family. In fact, these policies have flown in the face of Methodist theology, social concerns and history.

This library will be built on lies, deceptions, manipulation and fantasy. If you want to think out of the box, forget Katrina and build the library in Iraq. I am sure the Iraqi’s will destroy it, just as many others in this country will have the same urge to destroy it anywhere it is built.

I’m with Larry. And judging by the excellent job done patching the levees by the underfunded (due to guess who?) Army Corps of Engineers, it could eventually be called “The Bush Library and Water Park.”

Hats off to David Greenberg for posting this wake up call about the situation at SMU and to the NYT for including it in Times Select. I am a Faculty Senator and tenured faculty member (History Department) at SMU who has devoted most of the previous five months to various forms of protest against bringing the Bush Institute to SMU. Perkins School of Theology Professors Susanne Johnson and Bill McElvaney’s protests against bringing the Bush Library Center (composed of a Library, Museum and Institute) to SMU inspired a surprisingly small number of faculty, including myself, to pull our heads out of our books. Since the Bush Institute is the most objectionable part of the Bush Library Center, we focused our opposition against it. We found like-minded faculty not only in the expected places across our beautiful campus (humanities, some social sciences, arts, and science divisions), but also in the halls of the Business School, the recesses of the Law School (which feted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in February 2007), and in the one of Engineering School’s buildings (ironically, funded in part by Halliburton).

Our efforts, which included a petition drive, were met with outright resistance and hostility not only from SMU administrators but also from more than a handful our own colleagues on the faculty. While it has not been possible to statistically gauge the support among faculty for the Bush Institute, it is likely that at least forty-percent, if not more, support it. These supporters include the Faculty Senate President (who paradoxically is a self-proclaimed Bush-hating feminist theater professor), most of the political science and economics faculty, some faculty of the Perkins School of Theology (one of whom explained how the facility would enhance teaching about wartime ethics), a handful of my own colleagues in the History Department (including one who was recently appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), as well as many others across the campus.

By and large, the supporters of the plans for the Bush Institute dismissed reasoned arguments about the lack of precedent for establishing an independent, partisan think tank on a university campus, and the threat to SMU’s academic integrity that such a plan posed. Mostly their support for the plan seemed to pivot around an eagerness to land the Bush Library Center at any cost. SMU’s President insisted that the Bush Library Center was a “package deal”: that is, the library, museum, and institute would come to SMU together or not at all. While some faculty felt that it would be best to preserve the university’s academic integrity and reputation at the possible cost of losing the Bush Library and Museum, many others felt that hosting the Library and Museum would bring so many benefits (mostly financial ones) that the objections to the Bush Institute were negligible.

Just as the Bush Administration has attempted to do in contexts, a Faculty Senator (who was not a lone voice on the Senate) tried to turn deliberations about the Bush Library Center into a popularity contest, but what is more, into a loyalty test: we could either be with SMU’s President or against him. While I think it is fair to say that none of us in what the student newspaper called “the honorable opposition” are against President Turner; some of us disagree with him about the acceptability of the Bush Institute on our campus, let alone any campus of higher education.

The story is not over. I hope that Greenberg’s blog — especially his call for journalistic attention to the ins and outs of the mixture between national, local, campus, and church politics — is answered. The on-going SMU story throws light on how big money and partisan politics are staking unethical claims on institutions of higher education and are doing so with the help of some members of the academy itself. Meanwhile, presumably the negotiations between SMU and the Bush people are secretly proceeding, the semester is definitely over, Bill Moyers’ terrific SMU commencement speech last Saturday is a lingering memory, and a long, hot Dallas summer stretches out before us.

There is a pithy proverb in my language (Yoruba) that roughly translates as “character is like smoke”, with the implication that no matter how hard one tries, the true nature of one’s character will ultimately leak out, just like smoke. Observe how bit by bit, this administration is slowly but surely being systematically revealed for its Pharisaic hypocrisy on moral matters; its cynical disregard for the rule of law and common decency; its mean-spiritedness towards those who do not agree with its policies; and its mind-boggling incompetence strangely juxtaposed with its insufferable arrogance. It is entirely in perfect keeping with the true character of the man Bush himself that his library will come to life as you have described. But history cannot be completely manipulated, not even by this collection of the most embarrassing public servants in recent history. The smoke of Bush’s character will ultimately leak out for all to see, even in the monstrosity that will be this Library.

Congratulations to those who avidly support this failed presidency and the group who made it possible. Heaven help us if they succeed in doing this. As a history buff, I cannot think of anything that would continue our downward spiral of our edsucational institutions. History, by definition, must be both accurate and unbiased. Having the fox organize the hen house sure works well only for the fox and his friends.

A Republican presidential candidate of little public notice, Ron Paul, spoke on the floor of Congress last night, reminding us that patriotism was founded in civil disobedience to the rule of King George. As a Vietnam veteran, I came to appreciate the public outcry against that war. Vietnam lasted from 1961 til 1975. How long do you think we will stay the course in Iraq? Think again!

King George is back, and the act of blogging appears to be the 21st centuries “on the cheap” way of declaring oneself a patriot crusader. The American Revolutionairies, Muhatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King should ring a bell in this regard.

The concept of a university library dedicated to a man who is/was notorious for his disinterest in reading, literature, rational thought and scholarship is ludicrus to say the least. Moreover, George W. Bush has been described by one of his closest advisors, Henry Kissenger, as “intellectually lazy”. So what is the purpose of this library? Is it to be the font of the next generation of neoconservative morons who will plan, shape and design the next horrific and unnecessary war for this country to initiate?
The answer to this question is self-evident as should be the answer of SMU to the whole idea and concept of a George W. Bush presidential library.

Few institutions actually practice “academic freedom” — the teacher’s ability to make controversial statements without fear of retribution. But SMU with a “Bush Institute” would be officially opposing that freedom. Let the Institute be built within an existing barn in Crawford, with Cindy Sheehan’s empty tent as a space for visiting “scholars.”

Two thoughts:
1. Given the massive outpouring of literature denouncing, exposing, and decrying the various misdeeds of the Bush Administration (with much more surely to come), any self respecting university library will have the fixin’s for a pretty good anti-Bush library readily available.
2. I see an entire curriculum growing out of the Bush Library with courses such as: Propaganda in the electronic age; The use and abuse of history to preserve income inequality; The unholy allaiance- God Mammon, and War; Compensation: the Psychological Dangers of Father/Son Presidencies…..

Seems to me the damage boils down not just to the distortion that comes about when politics invades the independent world of scholarship but to the Bush people’s attack on independent inquiry of any kind. A journalist must have an inquiring mind, must, therefore, ask questions,and cannot take facts as presented at face value. This has always been anathema to the yahoo mind.
By labeling the questioning mind “liberal” the rightwing intends to usher in an age of closemindedness. Watching the movie “Inherit the Wind” is instructive.
And by labeling the press “liberal” they have insidiously and successfully persuaded far too many gullible people that the press is partisan, justifying a partisan response. Of course some of the press is partisan, but the point is that there is a responsible press and it is fundamental to a democracy. No surprise that a president who panders to the worst in people would encourage disrespect for the best journalism and,in fact, for any independence of mind.
Thanks to David Greenberg for bringing this subject up. And for using the word “disinterested” in its true sense, “without prejudice.”